MSI Computer Corp. Notebook GE70 0ND-213US;9S7-175611-213 17.3-Inch Laptop

The windows experience is as follows: cpu:7.9, Memory: 7.9 3D Graphics:6.9 Hard drive 5.9. I added a SSD windows experience is : 8.1 And 16 gig Ram: 8.1.This a incredible machine. Does not have a back-lit keyboard but the keyboard is very good. Reloaded and upgraded OS to Windows 8 pro since it comes with window 8. Very happy. Has slot for internal SSD also in addition to hard drive. Screen is good also.

Pros:

* Fast, high-performance processor

* Multi-touch pad

* Good, loud speakers (4x)

* Full keyboard, easy to type

* Large screen, great for editing/watching videos

* HDMI, USB 3.0, Multi-card reader

Cons:

* Mine came with a dead pixel; eventually went away

* Large and heavy, but still somewhat portable

* Battery life is dismal -not even 2 hours

* No dedicated "home" and "end" keys

* Windows key positioned on the right (takes getting used to)

Description:

This is a superb sub $1,500 laptop. The video card (Nvidia GTX 660, 2GB) is better than the one in the 15" Macbook Pro w/Retina (Nvidia GT 650, 1GB) -shame on you Apple -and the processor is also amazing. The screen is also nice, but as other have pointed out, it's nothing special. Mine came with a dead pixel, which I was pretty upset about, but it eventually went away with the use of free software.

I am able to edit videos without any problem using Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 and editing photos is also a breeze. Using Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and other programs for creating and publishing content also works very well. Frankly, this is a better buy over any Macbook.

The design isn't something I was too excited about when looking at the pictures but in person it's actually not that bad. I prefer the sleek look of the Macbook Pros, but the price tag and increased performance this laptop gives me is worth more than its looks.

Upgradeability is an important factor in this laptop. You can upgrade it from 8GB RAM to 16GB which I plan on doing, as well as adding a mSSD for caching purposes (for even faster performance) and, potentially, replacing the CD/DVD drive with a HDD bay. We'll see.

Bottom line:

Get this laptop if you want a large but powerful gaming/video editing laptop. Not for people who want ultra portability and long battery life.

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Has the mSATA slot, Full HD 1920X1080p screen and a WD Black 7200rpm HDD. When I was looking at buying a laptop I read a lot of reviews about this and other similar laptops. I couldn't find a definite answer whether this particular model had the mSATA or not. It does. The procedure to migrate is pretty simple. This comes with the MSI BurnRecovery software which makes recovery DVD's that restores your HDD image. I needed 5 DVD-R's to do this. After I made those I removed the stock HDD (Western Digital Black 7200rpm) and installed a Mushkin Enhanced Atlas Series MKNSSDAT120GB-DX mSATA 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) drive. Need to find a screw to secure the mSATA because the drive does not come with one and you cannot install without it. It's the same screw that would secure a mini card like a wireless card, modem or Bluetooth. Important!-Get into the bios by pressing Del when the MSI logo pops up and disable the secure boot option in the Bios. Booted from the recovery DVD's and restored the image to the mSATA drive. This puts 5 partitions onto that drive-EFI boot sector, Windows recovery, OS partition, Data partition and Recovery partition. Opened computer management after reboot and removed the data partition. I also removed the recovery partition which is about 17 GB because I have the backup DVD's. Extend the OS partition to the unallocated space. This gives you about 100GB for your OS. Get back into the Bios and enable the secure boot option again and boot into your OS. Shut down, reinstall the HDD and reboot. Go to Settings, Change PC Settings, General and select Advanced Startup. When it restarts get to the command prompt. Type in "DISKPART", enter, "list disk", enter. Find the disk that is 698GB (should be disk 0) then type in "select disk 0", enter, "clean", enter, "Y" because yes you are sure you want to wipe the drive. Reboot, get into computer management, activate disk and make the partitions you want. I moved all of the library file folders to the single "Data" partition I made on that drive. Music, Videos, Documents and Downloads. Installed 'most' programs on the OS drive and still have about 20GB left. Takes seconds to boot now with no stability issues at all.

A lot of reviews say this laptop is a little flimsy or fragile and does not seem durable. If you live your life with a broken screen on your cell phone I would not recommend this laptop for you. It is, however, thin and light which is why I chose this particular one. Take care of your stuff and it will last! If not, buy the extended warranty. You cannot set up the mSATA as a Cache drive on this laptop due to the Bios not being able to create a RAID array so a 32GB or 64GB mSATA purchase will result in nothing but hate and discontent because you will only get 32 or 64GB of additional storage out of it. Or, a compacted Windows install with the need to buy aftermarket file management software to store system and program files on the Data drive. If you do this and have to wait for the transfer rate of the spin drive what is point of going to mSATA in the first place?

I've had this for about a month now and love it. When I bought this I also bought the mSATA drive and 16GB of ram (this is manufacturers limit) G.SKILL 16GB (2 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory Model F3-1600C10D-16GSQ the entire process to do the upgrades took me about two weeks because there isn't much info on migrating the OS without an OEM Windows install disk or some software that doesn't work because of the EFI partitions. I refused to buy another OS when the laptop I just bought has one. There is very little bloatware on this laptop, MS Office setup, MSI BurnRecovery, Battery Calibration and SuperCharger. That's about it. No additional toolbars or ads as you would get with other manufacturers. If you duplicate my procedure the process should take you no more than an hour or two unless you have already put your own stuff on the laptop. In that case you just have to back up your files and then put them back on when you wipe the drive. If you don't want to wipe the drive you can just delete the OS partition but then you end up with dynamic instead of a basic partition because when you extend your Data partition you extend it to the left instead of the right. One last item-performance and graphics. I use this to play WoW and I have the graphics set to Ultra settings. The lowest frame rate I recall seeing is 27fps but definitely no performance issues even at the ultra setting.

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PROS:

screen; great colors and viewing angles

sound; I installed zune because of my phone the THX driver is great

noise level; only one fan but surprisingly it stays cool and the fan on "turbo" is audible but the speakers can easily overpower the noise otherwise its lower noise than similar laptops.

gpu; NVidia GTX 660m it runs crisis 2 at ultra(tested without aa on)

cpu; i7 nuf said

CONS:

multitouch pad; is rocker style and stiff seems to be breaking in after a solid day though

keyboards not backlit (not really a con; just would be nice)

no dedicated volume control; surprisingly a larger issue than I originally thought.. its fn+left/right or through software

notes:

it came with a corrupted wifi driver and usb ports didn't work properly:

the drivers disk it came with was also corrupted so I had to use a lifeline from my old laptop to get it working.

once I got the bios and drivers updated and working it was fine and it runs fast. I tested crysis the game wanted "gamer" specs for some reasion but it ran at 60fps (as the overclock drivers should) on "Ultra" and it was barley warm after 1 hour of game time.(i had the fan Turbo on)

worth mentioning:

windows score sets the gpu score at 5.4, however this is just a bug in how windows defaults the GPU on the i7 instead of the dedicated Nvidia GTX 660m.

supports 16gb ram upgrade and an empty mSATA bay(not to be confused with a SATA bay)

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This was a purchase for my son. I'm giving it 4 stars because my son likes it however the 1st one purchased lasted 2 days & had to be sent back. When I called MSI tech # it was by far the worst tech support I've ever received. Amazon was amazing & had a new computer shipped within 2 days. SquareTrade(protection plan)transferred over to the new computer. So far so good with the new computer. Hopefully I won't need to call tech.